Falconer rejects risk to information act

More staff and resources will be provided if there is a greater than expected surge in requests under the Freedom of Information Act that comes into effect today, the lord chancellor has promised.

In an interview with the Guardian, Lord Falconer also promised that the use of a veto by ministers over the release of information will be "very exceptional", as each instance will require the approval of the whole cabinet.

While he conceded that the greatest number of individual requests will probably come from companies for business reasons, ministers will publish information that is commercially confidential if they believe there is an overriding public interest.

Lord Falconer strongly defended the plan he unveiled in the Guardian this week for any information released to a media outlet to be simultaneously published on official websites.

He said he was "absolutely amazed" by a Guardian leader criticising this practice as tending to increase the reluctance of journalists to spend time ferreting information out of Whitehall. He claimed it amounted to journalists wanting to "keep things secret for their commercial interests".

Lord Falconer said that he believed the implementation of freedom of information will lead to a change in culture right across the public sector within 12 to 18 months.

People will come to accept that the facts and information underlying important decisions about public services will be made public "in effective real time".

He said that once people realised they could use FoI to find out how much their schools were spending on books, or the waiting times in particular hospitals for particular operations, they would use it to make better informed choices.

Lord Falconer told the Guardian that few people realised that once information such as an individual doctor's success rate had been a subject of a successful FoI request then that information would become habitually available to everybody in successive years.

He said that it was difficult to predict how many requests would be made. "Foreign experience suggests that you get a bit of a build-up to start with, but not a huge surge. But as time goes on, the number goes up and then it plateaus."

Extra staff have been provided for the information commissioner's office and the information tribunal that will rule on disputes under the legislation. The last 10 months have been spent acclimatising individual Whitehall departments to the fact that the act is coming.

"If the resources are not enough, we have got to provide them. I will see how the experience goes, and if there's a problem we will have to resource it, as we are legally obliged to deliver information within 20 working days," said the lord chancellor.

One contentious aspect of the act is a veto which can be used by ministers to overrule the information commissioner, Richard Thomas, preventing him from ordering the publication of information.

Critics say the veto will be used much more extensively than the government promises. Lord Falconer predicted that the use of the veto will be very, very exceptional. "If it is used, the cabinet as a whole has got to agree to its use. If a decision were made to use it, then the reason would be given to parliament. It would be susceptible to judicial review.

"I do not think that the way the Freedom of Information Act operates in practice will be driven or determined by the veto."